Egypt parliament to be dissolved after court ruling

.A constitutional court ruling on Thursday means that the whole of the lower house of Egypts parliament will be dissolved and a new elections will have to be held, the courts head Farouk Soltan told Reuters by telephone after the ruling was issued.The ruling regarding parliament includes the dissolution of the lower house of parliament in its entirety because the law upon which the elections were held is contrary to rules of the constitution, he said, speaking two days before another election to pick a new president.Soltan said the ruling was binding on all institutions of state, adding that it would be up to the executive to call for the new election that he said would take place.Egypts constitutional court ruled on Thursday that a third of the seats in the Islamist-dominated parliament were invalid, stirring fresh uncertainty in the politically divided country.The constitutional court ruled unconstitutional some articles of the parliamentary election law related to the direct vote system, MENA reported, referring to the third of seats elected on a first-past-the-post system.The ruling military decided on a complex electoral system in which voters cast ballots for party lists which made up two thirds of parliament and also for individual candidates for the remaining seats in the lower house.The individual candidates were meant to be independents but members of political parties were subsequently allowed to run, giving the Muslim Brotherhoods Freedom and Justice Party an advantage.That decision was challenged in court.The ruling will cast all of parliaments legitimacy into question. Parliament speaker Saad al-Katatni, an Islamist, had said before the ruling that the house would have to consider how to implement it.In the absence of a constitution, suspended after last years overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak, no authority had the right to dissolve parliament, Katatni said.